South Carolina on Thursday took a step toward better protecting victims
and punishing batterers after more than a decade as one of the deadliest
states for women at the hands of men.

Surrounded by lawmakers who fought for tougher penalties and a partial
gun ban for offenders and victims advocates in the Statehouse lobby,
Gov. Nikki Haley signed the domestic violence reform bill passed by the
House and Senate after months of brinkmanship and negotiations.

“A huge statement is being made today and that is that South Carolina
is no longer thinking about the convenience of the abuser,” Haley said.
“South Carolina is thinking about strengthening the survivor.”

State Attorney General Alan Wilson, who lobbied lawmakers to give
prosecutors the tools they needed to lock up repeat offenders and get
others into treatment, said Thursday the law represents a milestone for
South Carolina.

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personal-defense tool enables quick pressure point standoff as well as
restraining and disarming techniques.

On June 9 2105, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) responded to a
questions about gun control in his state by blaming Democrat
legislators.According to NJ.com, Christie was speaking at the Saint Anselm Institute of Politics, where he took questions from audience members.When asked about the death of Carol Bowne
– the Berlin Township resident who was killed in her own driveway while
waiting on state permission to own a handgun for self-defense–Christie
said;

“I’m dealing with a Democratic legislature — that’s
what New Jersey’s given me. They have a very, very different view of the
Second Amendment than I do. But they’re going to have to answer for
these things.”

He did admit that Bowne’s death will focus attention on gun control
for a time, but said he is not sure any real change to the gun control
laws will result. He put it this way:

“The Carol Bowne situation is going to force more conversation in our state, although I am not confident that it will change.”

Thursday, June 11, 2015

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to block two San Francisco gun
control measures that were fiercely opposed by the National Rifle
Association. At least one veteran court observer says the high court's
decision raises questions about how the justices interpret the Second
Amendment.

First, the basics: A 2007 San Francisco ordinance
requires residents to keep handguns under lock and key or to use trigger
locks when they are not carrying their weapons. Another law, dating to
1994, bans the sale of ammunition that expands on impact, or
hollow-point bullets.

Plaintiff Espanola Jackson and seven
other petitioners, including the NRA, filed suit in 2012. They sought an
injunction to keep the lockbox law from being enforced. But in March
2014, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the City and
County of San Francisco and left both measures intact.

In their appeal
to the U.S. Supreme Court, the plaintiffs repeated the argument they
had made all along, claiming that "San Francisco stands alone in
insisting that it may deny its residents immediate access to operable
handguns in their own homes under the guise of regulating the manner in
which they store them." They painted the picture of a law-abiding
homeowner who "must fumble for the reading glasses and the lockbox while
an intruder roams the premises."

The plaintiffs argued that they had precedent on their side, citing the high court's ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller.
In that case, the justices ruled that under the Second Amendment a gun
owner has a right to self-defense with a gun available within the home.

But only two justices, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, voted to review the case. Four of the nine must agree to hear a case.

Donald F. Scott was working as security for FOX News amid the unrest
on May 1 when he was arrested for carrying two firearms without a permit
to carry in Maryland. He remains in jail, awaiting trial on July 1. (Baltimore Sun)

As several hundred protesters milled around Baltimore City Hall after a
citywide curfew went into effect May 1, a mounted city officer on
Fayette Street said he spotted a man holding handcuffs and an ammunition
box.Officer
John Potter then watched Donald F. Scott — who was working as a
security guard for Fox News at the time — open the rear hatch of a Chevy
Suburban and pull a Glock handgun from his waistband, according to the
officer's account.

Scott, 50, has been in jail since the incident, held on $350,000 bail
on two gun charges, according to the Baltimore public defender's
office.

During the unrest following the death of Freddie Gray, a number of national media outlets reported from Baltimore's streets. Television networks such as Fox provided
security to accompany reporters and personalities, including Geraldo
Rivera.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Support for requiring background checks for all gun sales remained
high, with 85 percent of gun owners and 83 percent of non-owners
favoring the policy. In the 2013 survey, 84 percent of gun owners and 90
percent of non-owners supported background checks for all gun sales.
Support for banning assault weapons among all respondents decreased from
69 percent in 2013 to 63 percent in 2015, and support for banning the
sale of large capacity ammunition magazines decreased from 68 percent to
60 percent. Notably, the small erosion in support for these policies
occurred almost entirely among non-gun-owners.

The 2015 national
survey was conducted two years from the date the 2013 survey was
fielded, and used the same sampling approach and survey research firm,
GfK. The latest survey included 1,326 respondents, while 2013 survey
included 2,703 participants.

More than 11,000 people in the United
States are killed each year as a result of gun homicides, and the
firearm homicide rate in the U.S. is seven times higher than in the
average high-income country.

Link provided by George Jefferson, who said this "Courage enough to talk about the real agenda of the anti's‏"

Back in May this year, Andrea Colledani wrote an article for The
Beacon suggesting that the Second Amendment needed to be revised to fit
modern needs. Unfortunately, she did not have any suggestion for what
course of action might be taken.

Colledani was right of course, the Second Amendment is outdated.
Militias are redundant in the modern developed world, but the right to
bear arms goes beyond that. The guns used at Lexington and Concord were
hunting rifles, and regardless of your participation in the sport, there
is no denying that its practice is beneficial. When deer populations
skyrocket, the creatures destroy crops worse than rats, and coyotes are
more violent pests. I realize that these are less of an issue in Miami
than in my native Iowa, but the U.S. is made of much more than South
Florida.

If I had my way, the solution to gun rights would be in your wallet. I
don’t believe anyone needs to own a gun. Some careers may benefit from
their use, but that’s on a professional level, not a personal one. If
you need a gun at work, you should pick up your sidearm when you punch
in and drop it off when you punch out. But what about the every man,
those hunters I spent my last paragraph defending? They wouldn’t own
their guns or their relatives. I say all ranged weapons – shotguns,
rifles, pistols and bows – need to be collected by the government,
catalogued and put in a library. You want to shoot Bambi? Fine, but I’ll
need to see your gun-library-card.

Monday, June 8, 2015

Call it karma or irony or kismet or fate. Or call it obscenely predictable. The man who shot at right-wing hero and NRA poster boy George Zimmerman is claiming self-defense under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.

The attorney for Matthew Apperson said today that his client qualifies because he opened fire when he thought his life was in danger. As the AP notes, Zimmerman’s legal team considered but ultimately chose not to pursue a stand-your-ground defense after Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin.Under Florida’s law, Apperson would get a hearing before his trial at which a judge would decide whether he’s in the clear because of the self-defense strategy.

After all of the reports of Zimmerman’s aggressions and attacks – including attacking a police officer years ago, before he killed Trayvon Martin after aggressively following him because he was wearing a hoodie even after police told him to stand down, it seems like a pretty easy point to make that if you saw Zimmerman coming at you, you’d feel under attack. Especially if he had threatened to shoot you in the past and had found you at your place of employment and had driven there and was just parked in the lot after threatening you.

Zimmerman only suffered minor injuries from the bullet that went through the passenger window of his vehicle after what the defendant described as a “road rage incident”, which involved Zimmerman pulling a gun on him.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

A 25-year-old Capitan man shot and killed a charging bear while looking for shed antlers in the Lincoln National Forest.

The man was not injured by the bear. He reported Thursday evening
that he was searching for antlers in the forest between Carrizozo and
Capitan when he encountered the bear as he came over the top of a hill.
He told officers that the bear charged and he shot it with his .30-30
caliber rifle from about 10 yards away.

Department of Game and Fish Officers investigated the incident and
recovered the carcass of the bear, an adult female, early Friday
morning. There was no evidence to indicate the presence of cubs.

Referring to the man who shot the bear, Game and Fish Corporal Curtis Coburn said, “Based on a thorough review of the scene, I believe he had little or no choice but to take the action that he did.”